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Month / September 2005

when i was in grove city this weekend, i was talking to scott and we talked about journal entries, and he said “i just do it when i feel like it”, and i agree

it was a great time this weekend, and i thank everyone who i got to see. i’ll be in the gcc soon (probably october 5th, because i’m on duty for homecoming)

there’s a part of me (as it happens periodically) that makes me question my abilities. will i be capabale of doing a good job here at gannon? will i be able to make an impact on my students, and help them to see i care and all of that?

and those feelings are much more acute now because i care significantly more about what i do here at gannon than i did at gcc, because one it’s my job and two it’s what i think my vocation is and three it involves at minimum 53 other people in my building

when i was coming back to erie, i couldn’t help but say in my head i missed salem, ohio

but i love walker. i love gannon, and i love all the potential i see in others and at times myself. it’s just at the times that i don’t see it in myself to have faith that it’s not really my potential alone

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

i found this quote by gk chesterton to be apropos to what i said in my last entry

…as long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland… if he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them…

that being said, ironically, i think i finally have been able to convince myself that predestination is bunk, and that free will has to be the way. put simply, this is my logic

assumptions:
1. God is perfect justice
2. people can go to hell

3. being predestined to hell isn’t just
3a. i can determine that based on imago dei and my broken reflection of God
4. God can’t condradict himself because it would make him imperfect
5. however, if an individual freely chose sin, God would have no choice but banish him/her to hell
5a. see assumption 1

5. therefore, there are only three conclusions:
5a. God is not perfect justice (assumption 1)
5b. people do not go to hell (assumption 2)
5c. people are given free will do decide, with full consequence of their decisions.

the only loophole in my logic i thought is that i don’t know everything about God, and maybe predestination to hell is just… but my heart doesn’t fly with that.

remember the titans in my room tonight as program #2… we’ll see how it swings

i’ve been in erie for about a month today, and while there’s a whole lot that is worth talking about, there’s one thing that has been a partiuclar change in my life that’s really helping, and i want to encourage as many of you as possible to do the same:

go to mass every once in awhile

each sunday, i go to church (which i’m still trying to find one, though the Covenant 8:00 service is taking the top spot), but then i head to one of the two masses at gannon. and i will say that the focus on Christ and what He did for us is so celebrated, and everything leads to the Eucharist. the Spirit is so through a mass and it’s nice to follow as the priest goes along. suffice it to say it’s been a major part of my life coming to gannon, and i feel like i might end up sticking to this after leaving gannon. ultimately, as i go on and think more about my job here at gannon, how it relates to my life on the whole, and just my vocation, i can’t see being a good christian myself and not being willing to seek out a parish as well as a home church. does that mean i’ll become catholic? chances are i’d say no. but that doesn’t mean i don’t appreciate all there is inside catholicism.

anyway, i encourage all of you who might read my journal to try it once. especially if you see yourself somewhat mature in your faith. go to mass, and just enjoy it. recieve the blessing from the priest. i am willing to bet that you will find a new route of growth and a new opportunity to grow in relationship with our Father.

speaking of, i have about and hour before mass myself. i hope everyone is well, and i think of all of you often. as a postscript gcc folks, i might be coming to visit this coming saturday. hope to see some of you.

i’m not one to find it a necessity any longer to update my journal with “just because” stuff. if i feel like it’s of merit, then i may as well tell you. otherwise, what’s the point in wasting your click and my type time? but tonight i really felt like typing to the journal.

if you do not learn from the past, you are doomed to repeat it.

i feel like that has a lot more truth to it than its cliched state gives it credit for.

i am stuck between two parts of my life. i think it’s another part of the transition out of, well, basically childhood in general, and being on one’s own. because, really, it’s only been three and a half months since graduation from college, and only about a month since starting my new job, and so all of it is fairly new and unsettled.

and my biggest fear is tranposing problems and issues i had in the last 22 years in life and placing them in the time i’m here. part of the reinvention of transition is that you only have to bring with you what you want – someone who doesn’t know me from gcc doesn’t need to know all the silly things i did. while it comprises me, it doesn’t define me, and people typically seek definition over composition in the beginning, anyway.

honestly? only about three things i want to do

1. be a good campus minister and rd
2. be a good friend, son, brother, etc (and hopefully lover soon enough)
3. be a good man of God

i just want to know how one takes the failed attempts and not let them interfere with the goals.

i’m happy. i really am. but i overanalyze my own life much too often, and this is what comes of it. i’m ocd with my psyche.